Pictured

How to spell pictured

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pictured

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pictured mean?

1. verbFormed a mental image of something; visualised.
2. verbShowed or represented someone or something in an image or description.

Pictured in a sentence

• She always pictured a quiet retirement by the coast.

• The magazine pictured the actor leaving the awards ceremony.

• He pictured the finished kitchen long before the builders arrived.

• The report pictured the company as a model of efficiency.

Where does pictured come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word picture comes from the Latin pictura, meaning 'the art of painting' or 'a painting', which was built on the verb pingere, literally 'to paint' or 'to embroider'. The same pingere root colours a whole family of English words, including pigment, depict, and even paint itself. English adopted picture in the late 1300s, first for a painted image and soon for any visual representation; from there it grew a verbal sense, 'to form a mental image of something'. The form 'pictured' is simply that verb plus the regular past-tense ending -ed. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the letters 'ct' followed by '-ure' produce a soft 'ch' sound, so writers tempted to spell it the way it sounds must remember the silent-looking 'c' and the '-ure' that traces straight back to that Latin pictura.

How the word is built

• pict- (from Latin pingere: to paint)
• -ure (noun-forming)
• -ed (past tense/participle)